


Introductions

by Turbulent_Muse



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: And Just calling him Project Icarus, Gen, Human Experimentation, Micah you CAN read this one, OC death, People calling Dirk his birthname, Pre-Canon, Torture, no season two spoilers, violently breaking out of Blackwing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 02:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16673185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turbulent_Muse/pseuds/Turbulent_Muse
Summary: Dirk's first encounter with the Rowdy 3.





	Introductions

In a lab in a secret CIA compound in a remote location in the middle of nowhere Project Icarus was doing very badly on a test.

Today someone was actually in the room with him, two people, actually, a scientist and a guard. This wasn’t too unusual, sometimes they would try to see if Project Icarus could read people’s minds (even though he told them he couldn’t), and even during the other tests Supervisor Riggins would often sit in and encourage him to do better, to try harder. Project Icarus didn’t know if Riggins sat in on any of the other subjects’ tests but he had a feeling that he didn’t. The kind of feeling that was usually at least a little bit right. Riggins wasn’t one of the ones here today, but Project Icarus wished that he was. He didn’t like this scientist, she was cold, clinical, and quick to anger. Even more so than the other scientists at Blackwing were.

“Now, Icarus, tell me what is on the card.” She was holding a card so that she could see the front of it and he couldn’t.

“I told you, I don’t know!” Project Icarus whined. The scientist pressed a button on a remote and a device on the chair he was strapped to delivered an electric shock. Icarus screamed.

“Tell me what is on the card. Try.”

“Um, is it...a picture of a cowboy hat?”

The scientist looked back to the card. It had a star on it. She shocked Icarus again. He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming again.

Suddenly, an alarm started sounding.

“What is it, what’s happening?” The scientist asked.

The guard was listening to his radio. “It’s just the Row—just Project Incubus acting up again, but everything’s under control, ma’am.”

“God, ever since we brought in the fourth subject they’ve been getting more and more difficult to control.” The scientist said as she started shuffling her deck of cards.

“Shoulda just killed it.” The guard muttered.

“What was that?”

“Uh, sorry ma’am, it’s not my place to—”

“No, I agree. I told Riggins that Incubus Four should be vivisected. We already have three live Incubus subjects to study and they were a pain to deal with even before the addition of the fourth. The new subject was easier to contain than the others while isolated and if we were allowed to open one up and see how they work we might actually get some real results.”

“And there’d be one less that we had to…to keep fed.”

“Yes.” The scientist sounded distant. “That would be another benefit.”

Project Icarus squirmed in his seat. He was only half listening to the conversation. He had already been anxious for this test to be over but now that they were talking about Project Incubus he just wanted to go back to his cell and hide under the bed until the alarms stopped. Everything he’d ever heard about Project Incubus terrified him. Riggins sometimes let Icarus visit with other prisoners who weren’t too dangerous but he’d been kept as far away from Project Incubus as possible. Sometimes he heard guards joking that people who worked at Blackwing didn’t get fired, they got fed to Project Incubus. Some of the guards didn’t really believe that was true, but a lot of them did. And sometimes the guards called them by another name instead of Incubus, but only when there were no scientists or supervisors around. It had taken Icarus a while to realize that the two groups he kept overhearing scary stories about were the same.

One time, when being led back to his room, he had seen a body being dragged from one of the other cells. He memorized the symbol that he had seen on the cell door and the next time he saw Supervisor Riggins he drew it and asked him which project that sign was for. It was a three-pronged symbol connected in the middle with a single circle. Riggins said it was the sign for Project Incubus. Icarus asked who Project Incubus were and what they could do. Riggins said not to worry, Blackwing had them under control and he didn’t need to be afraid of them. But Icarus hadn’t really believed anything Supervisor Riggins had told him for a long time, so he kept feeling afraid.

The scientist chose a new card and turned back to Project Icarus.

“Now, tell me—”

Suddenly, a different, more urgent, alarm went off and screaming and sounds of fighting could be heard from the guard’s radio. A few words could be made out through the chaos.”

“—Broken—...—got out!...—everything! Full lockdown—...Incubus—...They killed—...—The Rowdy 3 have escaped!”

The transmission ended in the sound of gunshots and a scream louder and closer than the others.

The guard and the scientist looked at each other for a moment before springing into action. She hit a button on the wall and heavy automatic locks on the door clicked into place. He stepped in between the door and everything else in the room and held his gun at the ready.

“What’s happening?” Fear had raised the pitch of Project Icarus’ voice even higher than normal.

“Icarus, be quiet.”

“Ma’am, if any of those goddamn vampires get through this door I’m shooting to kill. I don’t give a shit what Riggins says, I’m not dying here. You got a problem with that?”

Project Icarus’ voice was a horrified squeak. “Vampires?”

“Be quiet, Icarus! I’ve got not no objections.” The scientist looked alert but wasn’t yet panicking. “Do whatever you have to. I don’t plan on dying here tonight either. Or ever dying like...like that.”

The guard looked haunted and shuddered. “Agreed.”

Screaming and sounds of destruction could be heard closer now. Just beyond the door.

“Will someone please just tell me what’s going on?!”

“Svlad Cjelli! Shut the fuck up or I swear to god I will gag you!”

There was a moment of shocked silence. Project Icarus hadn’t expected the scientist to know what his name used to be. Only Riggins called him that now.

Then the door exploded inward.

The guard started shooting but the man in the doorway dropped the weapon he had used to break down the door, ducked down, and rushed him. He collided with the guard’s stomach and knocked him to the ground. The man put his knees on the guard’s shoulders, grabbed the guard’s rifle, and started pressing it into his throat with enough force to crush his windpipe.

The sound of another gunshot rang out but the bullet missed its target and hit the wall. The scientist was holding a pistol but her hands shook so much that she couldn’t aim. The man removed the rifle from the guard’s neck and fired a shot directly into his head. He ran at the scientist and used the rifle like a bat to knock the pistol out of her grasp. Then he dropped the gun so he could grab her head with both of his hands. He slammed it into the thick reinforced wall of the lab over and over until a large bloody smear had saturated the wall and started dripping down to the floor.

He dropped her body. He was smiling like a maniac. He was spattered with blood, including some of his own. One of the guard’s shots had grazed his shoulder but he barely seemed to notice. The red stood out strikingly against his white jumpsuit which was emblazoned with a large number 1 and an X shaped symbol created by four stick figures sharing a head. It was a relatively new jumpsuit, on the old one the symbol had only had three figures. Incubus One started laughing.

It was at this point that Project Icarus failed to hold back a small fearful sobb. He had been tugging at his restraints as hard as he could but he had made no progress. At this noise Incubus One’s head turned sharply in his direction. Incubus One inhaled deeply through his nose and seemed to like what he smelled. He laughed and smiled and stalked towards Icarus in the manner of a wolf who finds a rabbit stuck in a trap.

Icarus struggled harder against the straps to no avail. He wanted to close his eyes but he couldn’t, as scared as he was now he was even more scared at the prospect of knowing that Incubus One was there in the room but not seeing what he was doing. He walked unbearably slowly, and when he was less that a foot away from Icarus’ chair he stopped and whistled loudly. At this signal Icarus heard multiple sets of footsteps rushing towards the room and multiple voices hollering and cheering. He only caught a glimpse of the other Incubus subjects’ faces before his vision went blue. And then it went back.

……

When Project Icarus woke up he had a headache. He also felt empty in an unpleasantly non-physical sense. He would have described the feeling as a sort of psychological hangover if he had had any idea what a hangover felt like. He reached up to grab his head and groaned. Then he realized that he could move his arms. He opened his eyes. Someone had undone his restraints. He got out of the chair slowly and cautiously, he was at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. Alarms were still blaring, and shouts and panicked footsteps could still be heard from all around. He could find a place to hide until all of this was over. And then Riggins would find him and take him back to his cell. And nothing would change.

Project Icarus grabbed the dead scientist’s keycard and ran.

It was pretty easy to get out of the building, every closed door was unlocked by the keycard and most of the guards either didn’t notice him or didn’t care. Furthermore, those who did start chasing after him were quickly diverted by a more pressing issue. It appeared that quite a few other prisoners had decided they were also going to take advantage of the chaos. When he reached the outside he was greeted by a fifteen foot tall concrete wall with a large imposing gate that had been severely damaged to the point where it was now unable to be closed.

As he ran through it he realized that he was outdoors for the first time in...he didn’t actually know exactly how long. It was nighttime and the grass felt damp and cold through his thin slippers but he focussed on just running as fast as he could. Which is probably why he didn’t see the chain-link fence until he hit it face first.

“Ow.” He said as he picked himself up off the ground. He looked up at the fence, it was eight feet tall and topped with barbed wire. He looked beyond the fence, he looked behind him. His face full of determination, he began to climb.

He made it a few feet up before his arms gave out and he fell back to the ground. Blackwing hadn’t really been concerned that he should have adequate upper-body strength. He tried again and again, never getting any higher but growing more and more frustrated that a simple fence should stop him after he had come this far. After about ten tries he, rather than getting fully to his feet, just sat up and screamed wordlessly at the fence. He heard an amused chuckle from behind him. For a second he was worried it was a guard, but then he realized that he recognized that laugh, he had last heard it very very recently. Then he was more worried.

He turned around to see the imposing figure of Incubus One leaning leisurely against a tree where he had apparently been watching Icarus’ attempts to climb the fence for an unknowable amount of time. He looked about the same as he had before, but now he had a black eye and a broken nose and there was even more blood on his jumpsuit. Icarus spun around until his back was pressed against the fence.

“D-Don’t hurt me. Please.”

Incubus One grinned slyly, obviously amused. But then his face got more serious. He stepped forward and looked over Icarus’ small huddled form critically.

“How old are you?” He asked. His voice was a mix between a low growl and a southern drawl, it couldn’t have been more different from Icarus’ high and clear british accent.

“Um, I think I’m sixteen.” Icarus responded, confused. “I’m not really sure how long I’ve been in here, I was ten when they first got me.”

“You look younger.” Incubus One responded, something angry but distant in his eyes. He himself looked like he was in his mid-twenties.

“It might be malnutrition. They didn’t really feed me enough.” Occasionally Riggins had brought him fast food and ate with him and tried to have a real conversation like Icarus wasn’t his prisoner. The rest of the time though all he had had to look forward to were the nearly inedible rations, and he didn’t even get that everyday since some of the scientists liked the idea of sending him to bed without dinner when his tests didn’t produce results. And they never did.

“Yeah? Us neither.” Incubus One didn’t so much smile as deliberately show his teeth. Icarus made a terrified squeaking noise and tried to back up further against the fence.

“You...know there’s a hole, right?” Incubus One said, smug laughter in his voice.

“What?”

Incubus One walked over to a section of the fence a few feet down from where Icarus had been climbing and easily pulled the mesh back from the pole, revealing an opening big enough escape through. Icarus wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of deliberately getting any closer to Incubus One but the prospect of freedom was too intoxicating, he ran over and scrambled through the hole. He hesitated before running off into the waiting world though.

“Aren’t you escaping too?”

“Not yet.” Incubus One moved back from the fence. “We gotta make sure we hurt these fuckers so bad that they can’t come after us when we run. And I’m not leaving without my boys.”

Project Icarus thought of the other faces he had seen for just a second back in the lab. “Oh.”

“Hey, wait there for a second kid.”

Icarus didn’t know why but he listened. Maybe it was just curiosity. Incubus One ran off a few yards back towards the compound before stopping at the (previously unnoticed by Icarus) body of a dead guard. He then ran back towards the fence and threw something over it. Icarus caught it. It was a wallet.

“Find a city and buy yourself a good meal and a warm place to sleep tonight.”

It was more of a plan than Icarus had had before. The lack of certainty in his life from here on out started to dawn on him, but then a question about the present pushed thoughts of the future out of his mind.

“Why are you helping me?”

Incubus One looked away, tried to look deliberately nonchalant, and shrugged.

“Why not?”

“Hey, what’s your name?” Icarus asked the older man, suddenly sounding confident.

“Martin.” Was his answer. He saw the expectant look on Project Icarus’ face. “Uh, what about you, kid?”

Project Icarus smiled. He had decided years ago that his name was not any of the things that the scientists or guards or Supervisor Riggins had ever called him. He had made up a new name for himself, and he told it to Mona and Project Moloch but none of the guards or scientists and especially not Riggins. But he had just realized that now he was going to get to introduce himself to everyone that way, it was what everyone was going to call him, it was how everyone was going to know him. And despite his fear he didn’t particularly care if everyone started with Martin, he just wanted it to start as soon as possible.

“My name is Dirk Gently.” He said proudly.

Martin seemed amused at the obvious sense of accomplishment Dirk got from introducing himself.

“Well, good luck out there kid, uh, Dirk.”

“You too.”

“Heh. I don’t need luck. I got something better.” Martin then howled loudly and soon three other voices answered him in whoops and hollers. Martin smiled as he listened, and for the first time Dirk saw true sincere joy in his face. Martin sprinted back towards the compound and Dirk, after watching for a moment, ran off in the other direction.

……

Martin slowed to a walk as he got near where the other voices had come from. There were flaming pieces of debris and bodies all around, it was one of the most satisfying things he had ever seen.

“Martin! Martin! Martin! Martin! Martin!” A child, small and gangly, ran towards him. He was no older than twelve and possibly younger. He had a jumpsuit identical to Martin’s, but with a 4 on it rather than a 1. When he got close enough he launched himself at Martin who caught him and in one motion swung the child around until he was sitting on his shoulders. Two other men in their early twenties in jumpsuits with a 2 and 3 arrived soon after.

“Martin! The flying thing! I made it explode!” Incubus Four continued excitedly from his perch.

“That right?” Martin asked, amused.

“Helicopter.” The man with the 2 said.

“He-li-cop-ter.” Incubus Four repeated slowly. “I made the helicopter explode!”

“Hey, good job, Vogel!” Said the man with the 3. “Got it in one!” He walked closer to Martin and reached up to fist-bump the proudly smiling child.

Martin looked out over the smoking wreckage of Blackwing.

“We wrecked this place up real good boys, I think it’s time to leave.” He said and then started walking. The others followed.

“Forever?” Vogel asked from Martin’s shoulders.

“Forever.” Martin promised. “Come on, let’s find a car. I’m itching to drive something again.”

“You sure you remember how?” The man with the 3 asked.

“Eh, mostly. I’ll figure it out as we go.”

This was good enough for the others, and they all cheered and howled with the joy of freedom as they walked off into the distance.


End file.
